Residents in the South Bay and Long Beach awakened to harsh shaking Jan. 17, 1994, but the Northridge earthquake spared the areas from the significant damage caused in the San Fernando Valley.

Freeways remained stable and no major buildings collapsed, but the South Bay was affected even 35 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter. The King Harbor Marina buckled, sending a vehicle or two into the water, a bridge at Hawthorne Plaza crumbled, a gas leak forced dozens of people to evacuate from a Torrance neighborhood and dozens of people sought care for minor injuries at local hospitals.

One man died of a heart attack in Inglewood.

Water lines on some streets ruptured, police protected businesses from looters and power outages affected 31,000 customers, including Los Angeles International Airport, which shut down for 2½ hours. Throughout the South Bay, business owners boarded up shattered plate-glass windows and supermarket employees cleaned up spills from broken bottles.

“We weathered the storm very well,” Torrance fire Capt. Steve Deuel said of the 6.7-magnitude earthquake. “If the earthquake was to be centered here in the South Bay, it would be a huge impact for us. Here, who knows what buildings would survive and who knows what wouldn’t.”

Firefighters and police officers watched the response of their colleagues in the San Fernando Valley, using their actions as a guide to improve their own plans for such a disaster.

“We certainly reassessed how we respond to major disasters and earthquakes in particular,” Deuel said. “We had a way that we responded back then. We definitely reviewed what we did. I think some things were changed and some things were added as part of the evolutionary process. ... We’ve tried to look at how we reassess critical facilities, which ones do we need to devote most of our resources to.”

Deuel said no major changes occurred in Torrance, but “we’ve definitely gotten better.” The changes include incorporating more city employees into a broader plan to handle a disaster, along with firefighters and police officers.

Community Emergency Response Team programs in cities throughout the South Bay and Long Beach have grown as residents realize that first responders will be too busy to handle every call.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department, for example, offered courses at the Lawndale Community Center Annex in September and October.

“It’s certainly been polished up as a program,” Deuel said. “We fill our class up every class we get.”

Courses teach basic first aid as well as how to shut off utilities and recognize structural failure.

“(Participants) end up being real leaders in the community,” Deuel said. “There’s going to be a lot of people looking around, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ We are going to need help.”

At the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, damage to a container wharf prompted harbor officials to develop seismic codes for the design and retrofitting of the structures.

One damaged wharf was shut down for about two months following the earthquake, chief harbor engineer Tony Gioiello said.

“At the time, there were no such codes for wharves,” Gioiello said. “People just used the basic building code and adopted those codes to that.”

Harbor officials assembled a team of engineers, scientists and other experts from around the world to develop a seismic code specific to the design and retrofitting of container wharves. The port also worked with the University of San Diego to test piles and wharf components to help develop the code, Gioiello said.

“Wharf structures are our most important asset,” he said. “Our container cranes are on top of our wharves, so we take it very seriously to make sure that when we design it that it survives some of these big earthquakes.”

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